Buffalo Teachers Story

Are you following the battle royal taking place in Buffalo between the teachers union versus the Buffalo School Board and the NYS Education Department?

(That’s our poll question of the week. You can vote on our home page.)

If not, you’re missing a major news story — one that you won’t find covered in the New York Times (at least until someone there thinks it’s important enough to cover).

People who need to stay on top of major stories NOT covered by the NY Times subscribe to the Empire Page.

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• Our basic headline service which costs less than a quarter a day and gives you access to an average of 300 news stories, editorials and opinion columns 7 days a week or
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Both can be tested out for two weeks for free. The Free Trial link and more information can be found at http://www.empirepage.com/2012/3/1/two-options-from-the-empire-page.

School Dropout Poll Results + This Week’s Poll Question

Empire Page readers favor Pres. Obama’s admonition to states to raise the drop-out age to 18 by 67% to 25% opposed and 8% having no opinion. Truthfully, however, it’s a hard position to argue against without appearing to be a died-in-the-wool libertarian — i.e., someone who might argue mandatory schooling is an affront to human liberty.

This week we’re asking people to stick out their thumbs and tells us where things stand with NYS’s economy: Is is “on the mend,” “moving sideways,” or “getting worse.” Vote today at the Empire Page website and while you’re there if you’re not already a subscriber why not take out a free trial subscription. Just click on the subscribe link at the top of the page.

We’re certain once you try the Empire Page, you’ll want to subscribe to be able to access each day’s links to hundreds of news stories, editorials and columns divided by topic and news source. The cost is only $95/year, which amounts to $0.26/day.

From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy My Employer

If the “99%” can feel justified in taking property away from the “1%” on the grounds of fairness, then why can’t workers take a bigger share of a company’s revenue on the same basis? That’s the logic behind a campaign launched by CWA 1199 against Cablevision. Why do Cablevision’s employees need a union according to 1199? Because a former company COO earned more than twice as much as his employees.

Fairness as a determinant of a person’s pay level is also behind the drive to raise New York State’s minimum wage and behind living wage legislation on the agenda in New York City and elsewhere.

The fairness doctrine is predicated on the notion that one’s pay should be more a matter of want than one’s contribution to the enterprise in which one is employed.

Hence, performance as a basis for rewards of pay and status should be downgraded because that criteria undermines the opportunity for those who do not perform well to get their fair share.

Further the ability of the enterprise to pay — whether public or private — should not be considered when it comes to compensation of the work force. Such considerations undermine the ability of those who are unproducitve to gain their fair share.

Let’s be clear that fairness is a subjective value. In the past fairness was balanced against the need of the enterprise to be successful and survive (either make a profit or do the job with available resources). Today, there’s an underlying assumption that no company or government entity is paying its workers a fair wage. Rather, they are hoarding their resources and giving them to the 1%.

A company that pays its workers above the value of the contribution they add to the product or service will not long remain in business. The history of the American car industry is about that very issue. By giving in to union wage and benefit demands, GM, Ford and Chrysler had to charge so much for their cars that they opened the door to foreign manufacturers which were able to sell a superior product at a lower price even when the cost of shipping foreign made cars to the US was taken into account.

The history of the public sector over the past 40 years parallels that of the automobile industry. Elected officials gave in to union demands without consideration of the ability of taxpayers to foot the bill, often by ignoring the future pension obligations they were agreeing to. That lack of political courage has harmed both public sector employees and the general public, as it contributed to the belief that public sector employees are overpaid and underworked relative to private sector workers.

Let’s not waste our time debating whether fairness as a basis of compensation is socialistic or communistic. Labels are not important. What’s important is to recognize the long-term implications of undermining ambition and achievement.

Taken to its logical conclusion doing well in school and working hard in order to obtain a job that gives one decision-making authority and pays well should be discouraged. Why? Those values place the successful individual above the norm and undermine the ability of those who are below average to get their fair share.

Like pay, school grades should not be given out on the basis of performance but rather on the basis of want. Minority and handicapped students have a greater want of good grades since many come from low-income households and enter school with “unfair” disadvantages. Since they will not need to learn skills or work-world values in order to get a fair wage why require that they master subjects or compete with other students!

Grades, jobs and compensation should not be based on merit or performance but rather want — the measure of fairness.

Since the majority in any country skew to the average, the tendency of democractic societies is to elect officials who are in favor of policies that focus on results rather than contribution, on rewards rather than worth, on outcomes rather than effort.

The question we must ask ourselves is will that kind of society be able to compete against those that reward success based on enterprise, competition and equal opportunity and that provide a model for young people justifying effort and ambition? We only need to read the daily accounts of the problems facing Europe to gain a hint of the answer.

If that’s where this country is headed, is such an outcome the kind of fairness we owe future generations?

School Mergers Work

Need evidence that merging school districts can be done with benefit to the taxpayers and students? Read today’s story in the Auburn Citizen “Union Springs, Port Byron merger working“.

To stay on top of school mergers, local government sharing, local elections and all the local government news around NYS, subscribe to the Empire Page. The cost is less than a quarter a day.

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Education Merger Cold Feet

School district officials — elected and appointed — who have cold feet about considering merging with neighboring districts might consider the discussion taking place in Maryland. The State Legislature is considering merging the University of Maryland with the University of Baltimore. The reasons are the same ones that should propel school districts mergers in New York state — the ability to offer students more choices, cost savings by eliminating inefficient use of capital equipment — from buses to copy machines, better use of personnel and the ability to devote resources to education which are now wasted on administration. The points of resistance are also the same — people who have a vested personal interest in their fiefdoms don’t want change. They try to rally others around the myth of their unique identity, claiming individuals will be lost in the larger institution. That could happen of course if the new administration isn’t conscious of the need to maintain open communications channels for all participants, but the time to recognize that consolidation is not just a good thing, but a necessary thing, is now.

Can School Aid be Cut Equitably?

The answer, according to an analysis posted today by the Citizens Budget Commission, is “yes”.

In “Unavoidable School Aid Cuts: Do the Least Harm by Targeting,” CBC staffers Elizabeth Lynam and Selma Mustovic argue “limited available funding should be targeted to the neediest schools and pupils”.

Can cutting state aid to education be avoided? Given the state’s projected $7.5 billion deficit, CBC says the answer is “No”.

The problem is that most people don’t know the facts when it comes to state school aid.

• They don’t know that New York spends more than $52 billion on education –one out of every three tax dollars raised locally and by state taxes.
• They don’t know that state aid doubled in the past decade.
• They don’t know that only 37% of the increased spending went to teachers’ salaries. The rest — nearly $5,000 per pupil — went to such things as increased administrative costs, construction costs and fringe benefits.
• They don’t know that New York’s student-to-teacher ratio is 17% lower than the rest of the country.
• They don’t know that all that spending has not yielded significant improvements in student test scores.

So while the Governor’s budget proposal would help poor districts and cut state aid to rich districts — many of which have substantial reserve funds, CBC recommends taking an even knife to the problem in order to give greater aid to poor districts.

It would take great political courage to follow this recommendation. Courage is a commodity that’s sorely been lacking in Albany in the past. Will 2010 be any different?

State Budget & Funding Schools

In today’s Siena College Research Institute poll an interesting contradiction in voter thinking is revealed in hard numbers. On the one hand, voters do not want the state aid to education to be reduced; in fact they want it to be increased even if that means higher taxes. On the other hand, however, voters want the state budget to be cut and they want taxes to be lowered.

Of course we’re talking about voters in the aggregate, but that contradiction lives in the minds of many individual voters. Who ever said human beings — much less registered voters — are consistent?

The contradiction demonstrates that voters are sadly uninformed when it comes to education funding and the state budget. They view the problem from the perspective of their home community rather than from the state as a whole.

Voters are also loath publicly to oppose school spending. Yet, watch their behavior when they get a chance to vote on their local district budgets. If there is any hint of discretionary spending (on such items as libraries, art, music, etc.) and they’ll vote ‘no’.

The larger problem is complicated by the fact that governors don’t like to take on the problem of rich districts versus poor districts. There are districts across the state with large reserve funds not to mention solid tax bases, but try to reduce their next year’s state aid and they’ll run crying to their state legislators.

There is also the problem that we’ve had a laissez-faire approach to the organization of school districts. The fact is that there is unnecessary duplication of resources across the state as well as the failure to realize the benefits that centralization can bring.

Think of it this way: There are computers, fax machines, copy machines and other technology with underutilized capacity sitting in school district offices across the state. Tax payers have paid for their purchase and continue to pay for maintenance without getting the potential benefits that should accrue.

The same is true of people. Merge two districts and many of the people in the superintendent’s office from the superintendent down to the janitorial staff can become more productive without any increase in cost. Even teachers can be more productively employed. Were that not the case, then BOCES would not exist!

Here are two solutions:

1) Give districts a choice: demonstrate that you are lowering costs either on your own or as a result of sharing services with neigbhoring districts or have your state aid formula reduced.

2) Provide an incentive for small districts to merge. The State Education Department ought to be geared up to assist districts merge quickly and efficiently with lesson plans on how to reduce costs without any decline in service quality.

Other solutions, including reform of the Wicks’ Law that inflates construction costs, have been offered by a variety of organizations including the Empire Center, New Yorkers for Growth and Unshackle Upstate.

This is a great opportunity for voter education. Spread the word.

The Most Needed Educational Reform of All

If I were the Commissioner of the NYS Dept. of Education or of the US Dept. of Education, neither of which positions I would actually take if they were offered, which of course they will not be, I would push for the single most needed educational reform across our entire system of education, which is…are you ready? Now read closely…What EVERY SCHOOL SYSTEM in the United States of America needs to do is MANDATE, REQUIRE and INSIST that every student take a course in business math.

Business math? I can hear your jaws dropping. Now please close your mouths and let me tell you why. Then you can tell me how ridiculous an idea that is…which of course it is not.

What do the American people as a whole suffer from which has been written about daily in the newspapers of this country and reported on broadcast stations, etc., etc.? Answer: a lack of understanding the mathematics of the core activities on which our society rests. Not only are most Americans extremely ignorant of the fundamentals of the workings of our banking and tax systems, but they cannot begin to manage the basics of household economics.

99 percent of Americans don’t operate from a family budget. They don’t and many can’t balance their check books. They don’t know their net worth much less how to figure it. They don’t know what it means when they borrow to purchase large items like a car or a house. They don’t know what they are obligating themselves to when they take out a credit card. They don’t know how much money they’ll need to retire on or how long their savings will last.

Some people want to blame the banks, the credit card companies, the mortgage lenders…and yes, there are plenty of unscrupulous people out there who will take advantage of the uneducated public’s ignorance, but the vast…and I mean VAST majority of college graduates don’t know this stuff either.

Problem: If two working adults in a family of four have a combined gross income of $62,400 a year ($600/week a piece) and they want to purchase a house that costs $300,000 with a 5% down payment with an adjustable rate mortgage which increases 1% a year starting at 3%, how many years before they lose the house and have to file for bankruptcy?

Problem: If a single parent with two kids and a $600/week gross income spends $200/week on groceries and eating out, $200/month on cable TV, and $120/month on her cell phone, how soon will she max out her credit card and have to take out a new one?

Problem: If the US Congress passes a federal budget which proposes to spend $1.3 trillion dollars more than projected revenues and the national debt currently stands at $12.3 trillion dollars, how much will each American owe the Chinese government and the rest of the buyers of US debt at the end of the year?

Problem: If the NYS Legislature spends $200 million in “member items” this year, how much will the state’s taxpayers have to cough up to cover that cost…and don’t say $200 million because you haven’t taken into account the following:

1) the cost of the interest that New York is paying because it’s revenues exceed its expenditures, or
2) the cost of administering the expenditures of those member items.

Do you think the legislators hand out bags of money? No, there’s a whole bureaucracy with office space, utilities, computers and copy machines, phone lines and Internet connections, salaries and pension obligations (to skim the surface) that has to exist because your legislator wants you to think that without his/her largess your little league ball field would be a cow pasture.

Not only would I insist that every student takes a course in business math, but I’d incentivize the teachers of that subject by offering bonuses to those teachers who provide some proof that their students have mastered the subject…I’d give students got an ‘A’ if they taught their parents how to balance a checkbook, read their mortgage contract and make up a family budget? What a boost to our economy that would be!